Pin Tales: Perfect game 19 years in the making for Dartmouth’s Nick Jenkins

By Vicki Prevost / Pin Tales

Nick Jenkins, 29, of Dartmouth, has been working on his game for a number of years and it is slowly coming around.

“But, it’s an ongoing project,” he said.

Three years ago he decided to change the way he bowls because he wasn’t improving.

“I was a forward roller (the ball rolls down the lane over the thumbhole),” the right-handed bowler said. “I knew I had to stop doing that in order to get better. It’s been a tough three years.”

He purchased a WristWidget that was designed by a hand therapist for wrist pain treatment associated with grip, wrist rotation and weight bearing for use to alleviate ulnar-sided wrist pain. The WristWidget is clinically proven to reduce wrist pain and increase wrist strength.

“I used to use a huge gadget thing that went half-way up my arm to help with the pain I was having,” he said. “I like the much-smaller WristWidget better and never bowl without it now,” Jenkins said.

On March 1, while wearing his new gadget, in the Center League at Wonder Bowl, he bowled his first-career 300 game in the last game of a disappointing 630 series with a new ball, a Roto-Grip Wreck-It that Danny Gauthier from Strike F/X Pro Shop (at Wonder Bowl) drilled for him and he first broke out that day.

“Danny drills all of my bowling balls,” he said “but, I had a difficult time trying to figure the ball out during the first two games that night. I couldn’t pick up any spares and didn’t get any doubles (strikes). After the second game, I moved seven and three and that worked.”

Jenkins moved seven boards to the left on the approach with his feet and three boards to the left of his normal target on the lane.

“I was very surprised that it worked,” he said. “It’s only taken me 19 years to get a perfect game.”

Coming from a bowling family, it was natural that bowling would be a part of his life. His parents, Jeff and Rachel Jenkins, transported him to the former Bowlers Country Club in Fairhaven every Saturday so he could bowl the junior program there.

“I only bowled there for one year,” Jenkins said. “The center closed and I moved over to the junior program at Wonder Bowl. My parents did a heck of a job getting me there every week.”

He stayed in the junior program until he was 18 and joined his first adult league. He only bowls one league a week, where he is holding a 196 average.

A month before he bowled his 300 game, he bowled a 299 game.

“I had bowled 297′s and 298′s and then a 299,” he said. “I was getting closer and closer and finally did it.”

His highest series so far is in the mid-700′s, but he’d like to increase that in the future, maybe going as high as 800, as well as bowl another 300 game.

Wendy Medeiros-Howard has a thriving physical therapy business, but the Honolulu resident also believes she has a future as an inventor and already has a patent pending on a splint to treat wrist injuries.

Medeiros-Howard has many other ideas swirling in her head and dreams of eventually living off the income from her inventions. For now, though, the 37-year-old single mother of two will keep her day job as head of Howard Therapy.

"This is just a hobby, a very, very fun hobby," she said of her interest in inventions.

But her hobby has produced a wrist splint designed for people with an injury that is difficult to treat. Triangular fibrocartilage complex, or TFCC, causes pain and weakness in the wrist and hand and is common among athletes, Medeiros-Howard said.

After opening her practice here in 2000, Medeiros-Howard said she noticed an increase in the number of patients being referred to her with TFCC. She said she was surprised to learn that there wasn't a apparatus on the market to deal with TFCC.

"I just treat hand injuries. I don't do anything else," she said. "When I got here and got a bunch of patients that had this problem I started the wheels turning on a solution to this injury. For the past three years I've been doing sewing and manufacturing and creating this splint."

The result is the Wrist Widget, a name that her 9-year-old son came up with. Medeiros-Howard said the splint works by "squeezing" the two wrist bones together with just enough force without affecting blood flow. She said it "puts the ligament on slack, which allows it to heal."

In January 2005, Medeiros-Howard applied for a patent she hopes to get by September.

"I've gone through a thousand different variations, different materials, different stitches, all kinds of different things and I finally came up with one that works," she said.

The patent process was very involved, requiring pages of documents, a study of more than 100 people who have used the splint, a patent attorney, and a lot of trial and error.

"Through the whole process there were six to eight months where that's all I did and I loved doing it," she said.

Initially, Medeiros-Howard sewed the splints herself, but has since hired a seamstress to do the work. She said she's sold about 2,000 splints so far and her seamstress, Cam Heung, can produce about 80 a day.

Medeiros-Howard said she realizes she will eventually have to expand production should the splint take off. Sales are primarily made to patients who have been referred to her by a doctor, and on the Internet.

"I've looked at going out of the state to Hong Kong and to the Mainland for manufacturing, but I have a 'keep-it-local' mentality," she said. "They would have to really show me a good quality product at a really, really good price to beat what I have here, and I haven't seen that yet."

Taylor Rock, a University of Hawai'i graduate student, hurt his wrist surfing last fall. The pain got so bad he finally saw a sports medicine doctor, who referred him to Medeiros-Howard.

"She put me through some tests. She grabbed my wrist a couple of times, and she put the widget on and I instantly felt relief and better. It was amazing," Rock said.

Rock, whose thesis is on community based economic development, said he hopes Medeiros-Howard is successful with her invention.

"It would be perfect to create jobs and have a product produced right here that you can export," he said.

Medeiros-Howard was born in Honolulu and got a degree in occupational therapy from San Jose State University. She transferred to Stanford University, where she trained at its hand program for five years.

After opening a practice in California, Medeiros-Howard moved back to Hawai'i with her two young children seven years ago to be closer to her family.

She said she hopes her splint and other innovations will succeed, allowing her to spend more time with her children.

"I have all kinds of other ideas for the medical world that I hope to spend my time on. It works really well for raising children, and that is what motivates me every day. Being home with my kids in the afternoon and being flexible when they need stuff is what has driven all of this," she said.

A new device created by a certified hand therapist at Howard Therapy, LLC provides superior treatment for sports-related wrist pain.

For professional athletes, wrist injuries are serious setbacks. Standard therapy for the most common type of athletic wrist injury is rest, immobilization, and treatment with NSAIDs, followed, if necessary, by arthroscopic surgery. Bottom line: an athlete is out of work while the injury heals. This can cost an athlete hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars. Which has been proves as wrist-injured, top-ranked golfers Michelle Wie and Phil Mickelson have demonstrated in recent tournaments.

After a week in which five patients showed up at with the same problem, hand therapist Wendy Howard became determined to find a better and faster solution. Each had an injury common in many professional athletes: a wrist injury in the triangular fibrocartilage complex (TFCC). She soon realized that no brace or splint on the market fully addressed the pain and grip problems associated with these TFCC injuries, and applied her 17 years of physical therapy experience to the creation of something completely new.

“Ninety-nine percent of all wrist splints,” Howard says, “are developed by large companies with marketing in mind. Only one percent of wrist splints come from people who are the experts in human anatomy and splinting.”

After a year of research and testing, Howard developed the WristWidget, a device that stabilizes the wrist, but allows full range of motion to the wearer’s hand and thumb, a critical feature for athletes. Lightweight, waterproof and comfortable, the WristWidget is much smaller than most wrist splints, about the size of a wide wristwatch band.

Its unique design stabilizes the two bones of the forearm, the ulna and the radius, taking over the role of the TFCC ligament so it can heal. The Wrist Widget’s straps are adjustable to avoid the temporary hand or finger nerve irritation caused by the pressure of conventional wrist splints.

Designed to withstand the demands of the high-impact world of professional athletes, the WristWidget has been used successfully by over 1,000 wrist-pain sufferers from all walks of life. It’s suitable and affordable for anyone suffering from wrist pain. Satisfied customers include golfers, snowboarders, surfers, bowlers, and tennis players.

Clinical testing of the WristWidget with 170 patients at Howard’s clinic has shown an immediate reduction in pain and an immediate increase inwrist-related strength for all 170 participants. To be included in thestudy, patients exhibited at least one of the symptoms the WristWidget is designed to treat: TFCC-specific injuries, ulnar-sided wrist pain, or wrist pain associated with gripping, weight bearing, or rotation.

Honolulu, HI, August 08, 2007 --(PR.com)-- A new device created by a [certified] hand therapist at Howard Therapy, LLC provides superior treatment for sports-related wrist pain.

For professional athletes, wrist injuries are serious setbacks. Standard therapy for the most common type of athletic wrist injury is rest, immobilization, and treatment with NSAIDs, followed (if necessary) by arthroscopic surgery. Bottom line: an athlete is out of work while the injury heals. This can cost an athlete hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, wrist-injured, top-seeded golfers Michelle Wie and Phil Mickelson have demonstrated in recent tournaments.

After a week in which five patients showed up at with the same problem, hand therapist Wendy Howard became determined to find a better and faster solution. Each had an injury common in many professional athletes: a wrist injury in the triangular fibrocartilage complex (TFCC). She soon realized that no brace or splint on the market fully addressed the pain and grip problems associated with these TFCC injuries, and applied her 17 years of physical therapy experience to the creation of something completely new. "Ninety-nine percent of all wrist splints," Howard says, "are developed by large companies with marketing in mind. Only one percent [of wrist splints] come from people who are the experts in human anatomy and splinting." After a year of research and testing, Howard developed the WristWidget, a device that stabilizes the wrist, but allows full range of motion to the wearer's hand and thumb, a critical feature for athletes.

Lightweight, waterproof and comfortable, the WristWidget is much smaller than most wrist splints: about the size of a wide wristwatch band. Its unique design stabilizes the two bones of the forearm, the ulna and the radius, taking over the role of the TFCC ligament so it can heal. The Wrist Widget's straps are adjustable to avoid the temporary hand or finger nerve irritation caused by the pressure of conventional wrist splints.

Designed to withstand the demands of the high-impact world of professional athletes, the WristWidget has been used successfully by over 1,000 wrist-pain sufferers from all walks of life. It’s suitable and affordable for anyone suffering from wrist pain. Satisfied customers include golfers, snowboarders, surfers, bowlers, and tennis players.

About the WristWidget

Clinical testing of the WristWidget with 170 patients at Howard's clinic has shown an immediate reduction in pain and an immediate increase in wrist-related strength for all 170 participants. To be included in the study, patients exhibited at least one of the symptoms the WristWidget is designed to treat: TFCC-specific injuries, ulnar-sided wrist pain, or wrist pain associated with gripping, weight bearing, or rotation.

About Wendy Howard

Wendy Howard is an Occupational Therapist and Certified Hand Therapist with fourteen years of experience. Howard works closely with physicians, surgeons and orthopedists at Stanford Hospital, and the John Muir, Honolulu private clinics and Palo Alto Medical clinics, developing highly successful hand-to-shoulder therapies for all levels of disability. Howard obtained her B.S. in Occupational Therapy from San Jose State University. Howard is a member of the American Occupational Therapists Association and the American Society of Hand Therapists.